


The Owlery

by leviosaphoenix



Series: all i know since yesterday [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:45:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3294269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviosaphoenix/pseuds/leviosaphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity sends a letter, quotes Shakespeare, and makes a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Owlery

Felicity is not a fan of birds.

One of her earliest memories as a child is of going to the zoo with her father before he’d left. He’d made her walk through the aviary of exotic species, and the sparkly pin her mother had put in her hair that morning had become the immediate focus of half the winged monsters in the exhibit. After being repeatedly swooped, she’d both lost the pin and gained two cuts on her fingers that had then needed stitches.

That was also the same zoo visit during which she’d developed her fear of kangaroos, but that’s not something she likes to think about, either.

So, as she slowly climbs the stairs to the Owlery, she prays for the strength to keep going, clutching a slightly crumpled letter in her hand. She’s so nervous, her palms are sticky, and it’s made the ink smudge slightly on the envelope.

She’s only been at Hogwarts for a week, but so much has happened already. She’s toned it down for her mother though, knowing Donna won’t want to hear about _Venomous Tentacula_ or the moving, speaking portraits. Felicity instead sticks to things that she could say about a perfectly ordinary boarding school: that of the other girls in her dormitory, Caitlin is by far the friendliest; Shado is reserved but nice enough, and she’s not quite sure how she feels about Laurel Lance and her best friend Joanna yet. She writes about how great the food is, but omits the fact that she eats under a magical ceiling that looks exactly like the sky above it. She even tells her mother about her encounter on the train with the resident mean girl, Isabel Rochev, and how one of the boys even came to apologize for the name-calling afterward.

Finally reaching the heavy wooden door, she pushes it open, wrinkling her nose as the smell of straw and bird droppings wafts out. Feathers float down like snowflakes, and she glances around, trying to select an owl for her letter.

There’s a thunder of footsteps behind her, and she doesn’t move quickly enough to avoid being knocked over.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you! Are you okay?”

She spits a feather out of her mouth and straightens her glasses, only to look up into the face of the blond boy from the train. He’s stretching out one of his hands to help her up, and she subtly wipes her sweaty, newly-poop-covered hand on her robe before she takes it.

“Thanks. I shouldn’t have stopped in the doorway.”

“No, it’s my fault; I was running. You’re Felicity, right? I’m-”

“Oliver. I remember.” Embarrassed, Felicity looks away from his face, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Um, you probably don’t want your friends to see you talking to me, right?”

Oliver tilts his head at her. “Why?”

She shifts slightly on her feet. “Never mind. I have to send this.” She waves the envelope in his face for emphasis, cringing when he jumps back a little in surprise. “Sorry. It’s just, I don’t like birds, and the last owl that delivered to my house was really mean and it bit my mom on the ear and then squawked so loud the old guy in the apartment next to us knocked on the door to see if we were okay and the first excuse that popped into my head when he saw Mom’s bleeding ear was that she’d had a cooking accident and he gave us a weird look, especially after I accidentally set the garden on fire the week before and we’d used the same explanation… and you didn’t need to know all of that. Sorry. I never know when to shut my mouth.”

“It’s fine,” Oliver says, smiling slightly.

“It’s just… my mom doesn’t get all of this stuff as it is, so I’m trying to minimize the amount of trauma I’m going to end up inflicting on her now that I’m… this.”

“This, what? A witch?”

Felicity flinches involuntarily. “I’m still not used to that. To me, a witch is something you dress up as for Halloween, or even the one from that musical my aunt took me to see, the green one who sings that song about gravity…”

He looks at her blankly. “A green witch? Is she a metamorphmagus?”

“A _what_?”

“Don’t worry. Hey, my family has an owl. You can borrow her, if you want?”

Felicity looks pointedly at the letter in his hand. “Don’t you have to send that?”

“Huh? No, no,” he says, hurriedly, blushing a little. “It’s not urgent, and I’m not that eager to tell my parents I didn’t make Slytherin, anyway. I promise, Speedy’ll make the delivery as painless as possible for your mom.”

“Well, okay,” Felicity agrees, uncertain. Though she’s expecting it, she still jumps when a horned owl swoops down to land on the perch in front of her. The majority of her feathers are black as night, with a few brilliant white accents on her face and through her wings. She holds out one foot, her talons menacing, and Felicity quickly ties her letter with a green thread Oliver passes to her. “Speedy?”

“My mother called her Cassiopeia,” Oliver says, distaste evident in his expression, “but my sister gave her the nickname. I like it better.”

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” she muses.

Oliver frowns. “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s Shakespeare!” she exclaims, scandalized.

“The rose?”

“He’s a writer.”

“Do you know him?”

“No!” Felicity sighs, exasperated. “It’s a saying that means her name doesn’t change anything about her.”

“Oh.”

The owl takes off, and they watch in silence for a moment, listening to the beat of its wings echo off the stone walls of the tower.

“That applies to people, too, you know,” Felicity continues. “Your name doesn’t change who you are. Being a Queen doesn’t _make_ you a Slytherin, and being a Gryffindor doesn't mean you're not a Queen. Your parents will accept that eventually.”

Oliver frowns in thought, and she takes the opportunity to slide past him, ready to escape before her big mouth gets her into any more trouble.

“Thanks for the owl. See you around, Oliver.”

“’Bye, Felicity.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick one and not particularly exciting, but I hope you enjoyed it, anyway. I had this scene in my head very early when I started planning this universe, so it's important to me! Remember to subscribe to the series for update notifications. Thanks for reading.
> 
> I wanted to assure all of you that Olicity is the main pairing in this series; however, there will be other pairings in future installments (this is why I've chosen to post as individual stories in a series rather than one fic with multiple chapters). For example, the next chapter is SnowBarry-centric, and I realise that a large number of you may not want to read that. Be sure to check the 'relationships' tag on each update, and just skip the chapter if you want to; I won't be offended!


End file.
